


Erosion

by millenial_falcon



Series: Lost Pages [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Things, Canon-Typical Violence, Emetophobia, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, teen street thug to convert Baze is my jam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 11:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9321149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millenial_falcon/pseuds/millenial_falcon
Summary: They lose their home in increments, undermined by the persistence of the Empire.





	

**Author's Note:**

> emeto warning is brief (two sentences in a paragraph), but when caves start happening, tread lightly.

First, the Empire sends bureaucrats, fork-tongued thugs elevated to the title of diplomat who had thought to charm and sweet talk their way into the hearts of the elders, manipulate them out of what they came for. They had not anticipated a heavily armed guard sitting in on their meetings, staring them down silently with one hand on the trigger of a weapon men like them take far more seriously than a few staves. So they leave empty-handed, return to their masters without the exploitative trade deals they sought, and Chirrut laughs himself silly at their foolishness.

“They'll be back,” Baze tells him, still genuinely dour. He had volunteered himself to the task of standing in on negotiations. He knew the sort of men the Empire had sent, in his old life, before the temple; he knows how they operate. “They won't send diplomats next time.”

“Of course they won't,” Chirrut says, still chuckling. “And they'll be just as foolish when they return.”

The Empire declares them illegal. The monks’ dedication to the Force is outlawed, their occupation of the land that has raised generations of Guardians back into millennia lost to Galactic history deemed illegitimate. They send troops to remove them from the temple grounds. Not nearly enough, because their generals are the kind who will always underestimate a few staves in the right hands, and while his brothers and sisters prioritize expelling the invaders from their home, Baze takes a certain vindictive pleasure in gunning down the troopers that dare enforce the Empire’s claim.

Warmth in darkness is how Chirrut described him when they first met, when he was still killing for Black Sun, for survival, when he was starting to fall apart at the seams. It had made him think of embers, and the soft, thoughtful way Chirrut had said it had been a kick to the chest because he was already helplessly in love. After the first skirmish with the Empire, Chirrut lays a palm over the back of his hand.

“Don't go back to how you were before,” he pleads, just as soft. “It will kill you.”

“It's not the same,” he assures, insists, justifies. Because it isn't really. Killing with a purpose, to defend his brothers and sisters, to preserve the home he's chosen, is a far cry from the blaster to the back constant struggle of his youth. It's a distinction Chirrut doesn't make, and one Baze is glad he doesn't make because it means he's never had to. The Secessionist Wars barely touched the forgotten cities of Jedha. The temple walls in which Baze found sanctuary have protected Chirrut his whole life. The defensive forms he's trained in are still to him an aesthetic discipline. And while Baze would consider him anything but naive, he would also have him know that peace for as long as possible.

“It feels the same,” Chirrut answers him, face turned down, hand withdrawing. There were no casualties on their side, yet the Empire has still managed to chip away just barely at the sanctity of their home. It weighs in the way Chirrut sits with his body facing away from him, face turned down.

“It isn't,” Baze insists, as if his conviction alone can hold back the encroaching darkness.

Three of their elders are assassinated in one night, and it's Baze who stays Chirrut's hand when the perpetrators are caught. The Force has left even the temple since the fall of the Jedi, but in its stead he will protect those who live within. It's a silent, private vow he has made before, one that he reaffirms as he puts blaster bolts between the eyes of the three women and one man who ought to have known they wouldn't make it past the walls alive. Each one looks like they could be any of the fellow Jedhen he used to run with, and he drags Chirrut away from the corpses, leads his dazed footsteps to the others in their mourning.

No words pass between them, Baze in his silent, apprehensive grief and Chirrut giving himself over to prayer with the others. In the morning, as a community, they make preparations to send off their dead. Imperial troops are at their gates before they can even burn the bodies. Chirrut himself goes out to address them, open and exposed, appeals to the basic decency and consideration of a pack of rabid hyenas, and Baze blows the head off the trooper who takes the potshot he easily dodges.

A lifetime ago Baze had woken in an unfamiliar bed with a bandaged shoulder wound and been silently awed by the young monk practicing forms in the room beside him. He has never quite gotten over that secret reverence, but it surges in him stronger, twisted with a sense of mournful resignation, as Chirrut rises to the provocation of the Imperial troops, a single continuous stream of motion ribboning through their ranks, turning their weapons against them. The other zama-shiwo masters join him, seven against a battalion, expelling the anger and grief of the temple on the Imperial soldiers. In automatic motions, Baze provides them support, laying down cover fire, eyes always on Chirrut and the pained tension in his face as he ends the lives of their aggressors with methodical determination.

The Imperials are almost wiped out entirely, the only survivors those with the sense to turn tail and flee before Baze manages to set sights on them. But they lose Master Chungta, and as Baze descends the temple stairs, hurries to Chirrut's side, it is with the welling fear that the day is fast approaching when he may see the limits of what the other man can take. The others take Chungta’s body from Chirrut's arms, bear her away to join the elders, and Baze takes Chirrut back to their room. He gently washes the blood from his shaking hands, the dust from his feet.

“Say something,” Chirrut demands over his bowed head, voice wavering and fingers pushing into his hair.

Because he is so bad at this, has never come near matching Chirrut's eloquence or even verbosity, he frowns and tells him, “This won't stop,” and draws a ragged sob from his throat. He allows himself to be dragged up by the hair into the desperate crush of Chirrut's mouth on his, to be pulled in and clung to. He lets Chirrut take what he needs in manner of comfort, attends to him without desire for reciprocation, and takes him down to join the others after.

Baze helps the younger Guardians clean up the stormtroopers’ remains, haul them all together, making a mass grave of one ditch along the side of the main road. As inside the temple Chirrut helps with the addition to their funeral arrangements, Baze sets fire to the soldiers at their gate. He stands watch with those of his brothers and sisters who choose to stay, amid the reek of roasting flesh, until all that remains is a burnt out warning of charred plasteel armor. Most of his companions beside him are around his age or younger and Baze closes his eyes, swallows against the creeping, once forgotten yet still familiar sense that he is too young to feel this old. He leads them all back inside the temple.

Their forestalled funeral is held in the evening. As the youngest of the masters, it is Chirrut's right and duty to light Master Chungta’s pyre. In the fading dusk, Baze watches the fire light flickering over Chirrut's face. Guttering out, that was the rest of how Chirrut had described him to himself, and it had resonated so deeply that he ran from it at first. He has never in the years since sensed any indication that Chirrut suspects just how personally instrumental he was in fanning him back to life. If he had ever known how much of a conduit for Baze’s faith he had been, how strongly he continues to be his focus, he has never let on. In the cold quiet of the Jedhan night, Baze takes another silent vow he is uncertain he can uphold, swears he will do everything in his power to keep Chirrut's light from being smothered out.

Months pass and instead of the temple, the Empire seeps into NiJedha itself, until its streets are choked with their presence. All Guardians know the warrens that thread under and through the city intimately, so they drive the newly imposed governor to wild fury, smuggling fugitives into the safety of the temple or out of the city. Dramatic displays unfold at their gates, wanted men and women taking desperate flight to their last ditch hope of safety.

“This one is now under the protection of the Whills, stand down!”

The declaration that once held such weight, that was honored universally throughout the holy city, now echoes out of Baze's own history to be formed in his mouth, backed with enough firepower to force respect from the Imperials. They don't dare another frontal assault, not after being so thoroughly routed. Instead, they erode, chip away. They send squads to pick off rescue parties, collaborators driven desperate by their machinations to flush out safe houses. Every excursion from the temple is met with Imperial violence and soon no group goes without at least one of the masters accompanying them. Chirrut runs escorts for their fellow Jedhen fleeing the city, for their ever vanishing supply runners, without a second thought, and Baze goes beside him every time. After Master T’usar is captured and executed in the street, Baze will be damned if he spends even a minute behind in the temple, waiting for word that Chirrut has met the same fate.

Whether by coercion or fear or arrest, their allies dwindle. Steadily and methodically, the whole of NiJedha is turned against the Guardians. Finally, less than half a year after the Empire has installed their governor, the west wing of the temple is bombed.

Zalya left mere days after the Jedi Massacre. Baze watched her disappear within herself and after she was gone Chirrut confided in him that it was like she had shut down, gone silent, and that he had never felt her in the Force again. Two adepts, younger than both of them by at least ten years and scarcely more attuned than Baze himself, were captured on their guard of a betrayed safe house. Trotted out as if they were prized Jedi outlaws, the two were given over as evidence of the temple flaunting Imperial law, before being executed for spectacle. The west wing of the temple hosts the highest concentration of their dormitories, and within them the small handful of adepts that remain among them. When the concussive force of the blast reverberates through the temple, Chirrut gasps hard and shocked beside him, as if suddenly doused in cold water. Baze catches him as he staggers, face ashen. His fingers are dug like a vice into his shoulder and Baze half supports his weight as they abandon their guard post together, stumbling urgently towards the smoke belching from the west face of their home.

Troopers are already spilling in through the gouge in the temple wall when they arrive. Flames and the torches mounted on their enemies’ blasters are the only light they have to go by. Chirrut moves sluggishly, still reeling, and Baze compensates with sharper focus. Wading through rubble, through the blast-twisted remains of acolytes and his brethren, an old, old, familiar calm washes over him. More Guardians are rushing in to meet the Imperials head on, block their further incursion into the temple, and numb clarity guides Baze's hand. The Imperial troops seem an endless flow, backed by the cannons on their carrier. Baze’s focus is honed to eliminating each wave of targets set before him, right until the glow of kyberlight streaks past his shoulder. Chirrut and two other masters are charging the troops, just as they had before, the last two covering them with their lightbows. Sudden, strange dread slices through Baze and he lunges, catches Chirrut by the arm, hauls him to a stop and just barely avoids getting punched in the face. Chirrut’s expression is wild and desperate and the fist he's pulled just short of its instinctual target shakes with tension.

“What are you doing?!” he chokes out, just before another concussive blast knocks them both off their feet. There is darkness for one long, horrifying moment, punctuated by the warm, familiar weight of Chirrut's body against his and a sharp ringing in his ears. Baze gasps Chirrut's name in a panic, feeling it in his throat more than hearing it, as the rest of the world filters back in around him. His arm is caught beneath Chirrut's body and he works it free enough to curl around him, frantically palming at his back for the feel of him breathing. A groan rumbles against his chest and Baze exhales shuddering relief, closing his eyes for just a moment as Chirrut's shaking fingers find his face.

Thickening smoke burns his throat. Blaster fire is the first thing that filters back into his muffled hearing, followed by a raw, agonized cry from Chirrut that snaps his eyes back open. Baze jerks halfway upright, seeking a sign of injury in the low light, but the way Chirrut presses his face to his shoulder, mouth stretched open in silent grief, tells him his pain is external. Just past them, the floor is cratered from the second bomb, flames burning out among the expended bodies of stormtroopers in the last spot Masters Edda and Damra had been running towards. Chirrut's hand is pawing, grasping at the front of his tunic, whole body shaking with gasping panic, and Baze swallows, swallows again the chilling fact that Chirrut had been with them.

Bolts of blaster fire streak over the two of them. More troopers are already stumbling in over the discarded bodies of their compatriots, trading shots with the last two masters. From on his back, Baze has a moment to study the new lattice of cracks running along the ceiling. Clarity takes him again and he twists a fistful of Chirrut's robe, hauls both of them to their feet with a heavy stagger. Chirrut holds his head in one hand, shoulders bowed, moving like an old man as Baze shuffles them into retreat, dragging his blaster along with them by the cell belt. Ahead, in the great arching entryway to the dorms, Masters Imsook and Nevah are covering them against the troops at their back from behind a shield of ruined masonry.

“There! Fire there!” Baze shouts, dissolving into hacking coughing as he collapses with Chirrut beside them. Nevah rolls Chirrut onto his back and with his hand freed, Baze stares Imsook down and jabs his finger towards the new web of cracks in one load-bearing arch. “There!”

Imsook stares back in tight-jawed comprehension. Between them, supported against Nevah’s legs, Chirrut is gasping in short little hitches, face bloodless and sheened in sweat. His hand is still wrapped in Baze's shirt and the clatter of stormtrooper armor is gaining on them and Imsook is unmoved, face set with silent disbelief. With a snarl of frustration, Baze hauls his gun up over their broken wall of cover, takes aim at the damaged ceiling. A sharp tug against his chest sends his first burst shot wide and Baze full body jerks out of Chirrut's grip, fires again. A great, thundering crack rends the air and with a heavy boom, a first massive chunk of stone falls to ground. Fingers yank at the front of his shirt hard enough to tear, to leave friction burn along the line of his collar. As Imsook and Nevah stare in horror at the exponential, inward collapse of the main dormitories that blocks any further Imperial invasion, burying the Empire's men alive with the bodies of their slain brothers and sisters, Baze stares down, sick and shaking, into the mask of grief and fury twisted on Chirrut's face turned up towards him.

“How we treat our dead separates us from those tyrants,” Chirrut tells him later, voice tight and low with controlled rage. He has been laid up in hospice for two days since they secured the temple once again against the Empire, sick with the empathetic trauma of losing so many of their peers in one blow. Masters Imsook and Nevah have been helping guide what's left of the Guardians in unburying what bodies they can. Only one of the elders survived, and Chirrut is their last adept. The day prior he had the energy to bellow his rage at Baze for destroying a part of the temple, for killing so many, for leaving so many of their brethren to rot. Now he merely stews in quiet fury, Baze staying by his side, both penitent and defensive. He knows he was right, that protecting the living was more important than honoring the dead, and he knows that Chirrut has every right to be infuriated by that decision falling on them in the first place.

“We have to think about evacuating-” Baze starts to tell him with heavy resignation, but Chirrut throws an empty bowl at his head, cuts him off.

“And give them what they want?” he spits, voice rising. “Now we abandon our duty, our home, for self-interest?”

A galling chill runs down Baze's back and it's a fight now because they've known each other long enough to both recognize the slight on his past. “What do we serve by being slaughtered?” he snarls, rising from his seat. Chirrut tilts his head slightly, tracking his movement, face set with anger.

“If we are meant to sacrifice-”

“Dying serves nothing!” Baze snaps brutish. “The temple still falls, those animals still get what they want! They will wipe us from history, what fucking duty calls for that?”

Baze heaves an angry breath, ready to continue, but hesitates when he sees something falter in Chirrut's face, a flicker of pain that saps his rage almost a quickly as it rose. He closes his eyes with a wince, swallows and exhales, slow and measured. The troubled flinch on Chirrut's brow and the downward slant of his mouth when he opens his eyes again both feeds some vicious little thing in his chest and makes his stomach sink with shame. He turns his eyes away to the floor. At his feet the bowl he dodged is surprisingly unshattered and Baze knocks it aside with the toe of his boot.

“What are we supposed to do?” Chirrut's voice is small, making Baze look back up hesitantly from under his brows. His flinch has deepened and he blinks rapidly. Both his hands, laid out in his lap, clutch at his blankets. Baze sighs long, his anger thoroughly beaten, and sits back at his side. “This is our home!”

Baze leans back as Chirrut leans forward, reaches out to lay an arm over his shoulders as he curls in on himself. Tipping his head back, Baze studies the bare ceiling, tired and resigned, heart hurting with the sobbing hitches of Chirrut's breath. His directness and open acceptance are easy for others to mistake as naivety, but it's always jolting for Baze to catch himself falling to that presumption as well.

“How could this happen?” Chirrut chokes out and Baze palms the back of his neck, soothing his thumb over his skin. “How are we supposed to fight this?”

“We're outmatched, _wei_ ,” Baze grumbles, face still turned to the ceiling, brow furrowing at the little pained noise Chirrut makes in response. In less than a year, the Empire has all but annihilated them, reduced them to a mean fragment of what they once were overnight. “It's not about fighting anymore, it's about surviving.”

All those years ago, Baze gave up on merely surviving, gave himself over entirely to a faith that welcomed him with open hands and gave his heart to an acerbic young monk. A part of him thinks that this misfortune would not have befallen the temple had he not blighted its halls with the presence his past has branded on him. Another part thinks that first part is pure, self-centered arrogance. Chirrut shudders out weeks of accumulated fear and mourning under his palm and a final part of him knows that the question is irrelevant to how he moves forward, how he honors his personal vows.

“Elder Ailan needs to be moved out of the city as soon as possible,” he states, tucking his chin against his chest. Chirrut raises his head, both hands steepled over his mouth and cheeks wet with tears. Closing his eyes, brow knit with pain, he nods silent agreement. If nothing else, the Empire has been targeting their culture just as vehemently as they have sought the kyber the temple stands atop, and Baze knows Chirrut must understand this as clearly as himself.

“Imsook can take him, and whoever...survives among the acolytes,” Chirrut agrees, voice stumbling over the empty space left by the ones lost in the bombing. His arms move to hug his waist. “Nevah knows better than I do what we should bring with us; what records should be saved.”

“I'll talk to her,” Baze says, dragging himself to his feet. “Me and her can figure out with the others the best way to move out what we need.”

He squeezes the nape of Chirrut's neck, drawing away but stopped by the hand that raises to loosely clasp his wrist. “Don't fight with her,” Chirrut orders quietly, and Baze snorts.

“I only fight with you, _xiao wei_ ,” he says with warmth, but only succeeds in pulling a strangled, mournful laugh from Chirrut's throat. The sound lances his gut and he turns full towards him, cradles the back of his head with his open palm, thumb running over his scalp. Chirrut covers the back of his hand with his own and Baze bows his head.

“Listen,” he confesses quietly, studying the planes of Chirrut's tear-stained face, feeling his hair under his fingers. “No matter what happens, it's just you. You're my home - you always have been.”

Chirrut's face twists bittersweet. He laces his fingers with Baze's, pulls so his knuckles press to his forehead. For a long moment Baze stands, connected to Chirrut by his hands, lightly stroking his cheek. Silently, he breaks their delicate thread, watches Chirrut nod to himself and turns away, leaving to find Master Nevah.

In the end, nothing comes to fruition. In the end, they find themselves caught with even less time than they had hoped. Baze plans long into the night with Nevah and the other able-bodied Guardians how they'll slip out in shifts, which scripts and records are the most important to bring with them, what they cannot afford to lose. They agree with Imsook to wait until the next evening to smuggle Elder Ailan and their youngest wards from the temple by way of the kyber caves.

Baze heads back to Chirrut's makeshift sick bay, girded with the assurance that they all have some means now of getting to relative safety, only to the carrying sound of Chirrut shouting in terror. He staggers out into the hall, calling Baze's name with raw panic, sending him bolting to his side.

“We need to go!” Chirrut gasps, gripping Baze's arms as Baze clasps his shoulders. “We need to go now!”

Baze gapes, lagging in his confusion. Chirrut's face is rigid with horror. Their belongings are still in the upper wards, save his repeater and Chirrut's weapons.

“What's happening?” Baze asks shakily, because it's been long enough for him to recognize a disturbance when it's affecting Chirrut. Fingers dig in his flesh and Chirrut's lips are corpse white.

“Something’s coming,” Chirrut mutters breathlessly. His face tics and he grimaces. “It's...cold.” He staggers just a little, gags, heaves a ragged breath. “It's so cold,” he manages before choking on terror, mouth wide, gasping. A reedy hiss of air steals from his throat, tightening the muscles in Baze's back with anxiety, and then Chirrut's head whips up. His whole body straightens with tension, hand groping up Baze's arm to his bicep and face turning towards the direction of the main gate just before a low, grinding moan reverberates through the temple. The sound is punctuated by a deep, sickening crack, and a boom that shakes dust loose from the ceiling. They both duck a little, reflexively, and dread clutches Baze’s chest just a tightly as Chirrut’s fingers on his upper arm.

“Wait! Baze, no!” Chirrut cries, voice high and tight with fear, when Baze yanks out of his grip, clambering back into the room Chirrut had emerged from. He is reaching for him, when Baze looks back over his shoulder, both hands out and lips parted lightly, so uncharacteristically lost and scared looking it turns Baze's stomach.

“We need these,” he calls back as he shoulders his blaster’s kit. Another deep crack shakes the temple, making both of them flinch again, and he'll be damned if he knows what the Empire is doing to their front gate, because it is definitely not the impact of bombs they're feeling. Baze grabs both of Chirrut's weapons, snatches up a dark travelling robe hanging on the wall. Chirrut is standing in a loose guard when he returns to his side, reacting in minute little flinches to some unseen presence. When Baze taps his arm, he gasps, jerks towards him. He takes his staff quickly, grunting in irritation when Baze tries to bundle him up, grabbing and pulling him by the wrist instead.

The heavy tread of boots rattles echoing through the halls as they both run, Baze following Chirrut's lead. Distant blaster fire grows closer, or the smell of carbon and burning flesh stronger, at intervals and Chirrut hares left or right each time, course corrects, taking both of them deeper into the temple. They're heading for the caves, Baze guesses as much, though their hurried path is indirect and confused. Disconcertingly, they run into no other Guardians. When he left them, they were already splitting into two groups, preparing, Imsook with his charges and Nevah with the remaining warriors. Baze has to trust them to themselves, though each empty corridor they throw themselves down lays dread upon him, heavier and heavier.

They round a corner, so close to the cave entrance, when Chirrut slams to a stop. Baze nearly runs into him, almost knocks him off his feet as he spins to double back, hands shoving against Baze's chest as he frantically hisses, “Not this way! Not this way!”

Baze staggers out his momentum, switches tracks as Chirrut careens around him, knocking past his shoulder in a mad scramble. He chases after him, catches Chirrut by the arm and pulls him off balance too easily, drags him out of sight into an alcove, pinning him against the wall as if they don't both know who is the stronger between them. Chirrut tilts his face up towards him, gaping with a look of fear and betrayal that twists Baze's gut, before jerking his head into a slight cock, flinching, listening beyond themselves.

“We have to go, we have to go!” he pants and Baze crowds him to discourage him bolting, moves his hand down to clasp his wrist. Chirrut's skin against his is clammy.

“The way out is that way,” he says, low and hurried. “We _have_ to go that way.”

Chirrut shakes his head, a small, sharp motion, breath hitching in his chest short and fast like a desert lepzi. “We can't, we can't! It's too dark, he'll see me!”

Baze draws back, looks down at Chirrut in alarm. He is visibly shaking, struggling to breathe, brow beaded with a cold sweat. The tromp of boots nearby breaks Baze’s attention and he tightens his grip on his blaster, checks cautiously around the corner of the alcove. They get nearer, though nothing moves in the low light, and Baze squints, jarred suddenly by a sickening, shuddering gasp. All his attention wheels back on Chirrut as he staggers into a crouch, face twisted in abject horror, and _looks_ up. The clatter of a full squadron passes overhead, accompanied by some sort of rasping hiss, and then Chirrut really does bolt. He flips Baze’s grip on his wrist, clutching hard at his forearm and lunges, dragging him along, running full kilter towards the entrance to the caves.

The weight of both his blaster’s kit and Chirrut’s lightbow are misbalanced, throwing him off, and it’s all Baze can do to stay on his feet as Chirrut pulls him along at panic speed. He whips them down the main path into the caves, off the first side trail into turn after labyrinthine turn into the depths. His fingers stay locked around Baze’s wrist, digging in painfully. No sound of pursuit reaches them, only the ragged rasp of Chirrut’s breath, the roar of his own pulse in his ears. It does nothing to quell the choking sense of dread caught in Baze’s throat. Their footsteps echo off the walls around them, Chirrut’s soft, Baze’s heavy, as their shadows cast strange shapes in the cold kyberlight.

The moment they exit the caves, Chirrut releases him, stumbles away from the faint path, staggers to a stop and vomits. Baze reshifts his kit so it lays properly on his back, turns and blasts the small arch hewn into the cliff, putting at least a temporary wall of stone between them and the temple’s invaders. His attention returns to Chirrut immediately, to the sight of him leaning on his staff, free hand braced against his thigh. He waits, gives him time to stop retching before moving to touch him. When he does, it's in an urgent rush to his side as Chirrut sways, sags hard against his staff. Baze gets an arm around his waist, stabilizes him as Chirrut tucks his face against his chest with a soft moan. Stowing his blaster, taking the staff from Chirrut's shaking fingers, he stoops to slide his arm down Chirrut's back, catching him under his thighs and lifting him with a grunt. His core aches from the anxious clench of their flight and Chirrut bows, curls over his shoulder, wraps his arms around Baze's neck and buries his face in his hair.

A little over a klik out from the main gates of NiJedha there's a semi-permanent layover settlement for pilgrims. In the past, they have both been to help the old twi’lek woman who sees to keeping beds for the faithful, so with a deep sigh Baze turns in the settlement’s direction. Under the thin, pre-dawn starlight, he trudges resolutely, mouth against the arm slung around his neck. With each step, Baze chokes down a welling sense of despair, keeps his back straight and strong as he feels the short little hiccups of Chirrut crying silently against his scalp.

When he reaches the encampment, Baze has only just enough energy to beg for help once, the words tumbling cracked and jagged from his throat as he stumbles down onto one knee, all his focus on not dropping Chirrut's unconscious form. He passes out to the feeling of hands bracing his shoulders.

Chirrut shakes him awake with urgency. “We have to go,” he says in a hushed tone as Baze figures out his surroundings. “There's a patrol outside looking for us, we don't wanna cause auntie Rin’dhe any trouble.”

Baze sits up fast at that, sucking in a sharp breath. Every muscle in his body aches, most intensely in his shoulders, and he winces, grunts with the effort of holding back a groan. Chirrut moves away from the bed with a slight hobble and Baze’s eyes go to the hem of bandages around his ankles, to unfamiliar shoes on his feet. He had been barefoot when they fled the temple, probably sliced his soles open on the scree in the kyber caves and Baze hadn’t even noticed. With a guilty scowl, Baze lifts himself from his unfamiliar bed. He touches the outside of Chirrut’s arm first, moves his hand up to his shoulder as he circles around him, gently nudges him back towards the bed.

“Sit. What do we need?”

“Auntie Rin’dhe said there’s travelling gear in the wardrobe,” Chirrut gestures in the general direction of a tall dresser, easing off of his feet gingerly. Their weapons are propped against the dark polished wood and Baze tosses Chirrut his staff before rummaging out two simple, heavy cloaks. “She packed us some supplies too, but-” his stop makes Baze check over his shoulder and he sees Chirrut listening, still hypervigilant. “They’re at the door now, we have to move.”

“Is that...thing with them?” Baze asks warily, throat going thick at the prospect as he quickly pulls on his gear.

“No,” Chirrut says, voice small, drawn in, some of the raw fear from the night before clouding his face. “No, it’s gone. It...left Jedha.”

A hammering knock echoes up from the door downstairs and the darkened moment between them passes, cut through with a quick adrenaline rush. Baze hands over Chirrut’s lightbow, helps him drape his cloak right to conceal it, and Chirrut shoulders the knapsack they’ve been given. They make their second escape out a back exit, jumping down from the second story window of the little house, Baze preceding Chirrut to catch him, keep his injured feet from reopening.

They slip back into the city through one of the old routes, move down backstreets and alleys, two nondescript figures. Baze keeps an eye on the hem of Chirrut’s cloak hiding his robes and Chirrut pulls them away from blind corners as Imperial patrols pass. They make their way to an old safe house and hide for three days. No one from the temple comes. Chirrut is silent as they pack up supplies and Baze aches deep, deep in his core with the unfolding reality that he has returned to where he came from. When Chirrut moves up into his space, places a hand over his heart and bows his head, Baze rests his mouth against his forehead with a weary sigh. They breathe together for one long, heavy moment, then they move on, to the next house, and the next. They help where they can and they keep moving.

**Author's Note:**

> 5 times the Empire failed to capture the Temple of the Whills, plus the 1 time they succeeded.
> 
> My best friend and I had a conversation about how, after Chirrut and Baze's introduction scene, any time they were on screen and NOT winning our suspension of disbelief was completely shattered. This led, naturally, to "Okay, but if Donnie Yen can take out like 20 stormtroopers in less than 2 minutes, what the hell does the Empire have to bring to take out an entire temple of Donnie Yens?" We decided the answer was Darth Vader.
> 
> credit for Chirrut's pet name goes to [ kaprosuchus](http://kaprosuchus.tumblr.com/post/154955070089).


End file.
